OTTAWA - An organizer behind a protest group that signed up hundreds of candidates in recent elections told members of Parliament on Tuesday that his invitation to appear before a House committee is proof of the group's success.

Tomas Szuchewycz was a witness for the Longest Ballot Committee at a meeting of the procedure and government affairs committee, which is studying the way the longest ballot protest affected recent byelections and the April federal election.

Szuchewycz was listed as the official agent for nearly all of the 200 people who signed up to run against Pierre Poilievre in the summer byelection that returned the Conservative leader to the House of Commons.

Elections Canada had to create a modified write-in ballot for that vote in Battle River—Crowfoot.

A Canadian Press story published on Oct. 2 about a legal challenge to federal election results in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne erroneously reported that special ballots have been available since 2021. Elections Canada says that special ballots have been available since 1970.

MONTREAL - An election employee noted a discrepancy in the postal codes of special ballot return envelopes in Terrebonne nearly three weeks before the election, but the error wasn't reported to superiors.

The mistake is outlined in legal documents filed as part of a court action brought by a former Bloc Québécois member who lost in the April federal election by a single vote to her Liberal counterpart.

Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné filed a challenge to the federal election result in the riding of Terrebonne, in Montreal’s north suburbs, in Superior Court. 

The incumbent lost by a single vote determined through judicial recount to current Liberal MP Tatiana Auguste after a see-saw battle.

OTTAWA - Canada's elections commissioner said Wednesday she has no evidence to suggest the federal election result in April was affected by foreign interference, disinformation or voter intimidation — even though the volume of complaints about the campaign shot way up.

In a preliminary report, Commissioner Caroline Simard said her office received more than 16,000 complaints about the spring campaign that ended on April 28 — seven times the number of complaints received in the 2019 and 2021 elections.

And while Simard's office said some of those numbers are due to "amplification" — multiple complaints about the same issue — the number of complaints about foreign interference, artificial intelligence, disinformation and voter intimidation was lower than her office had expected.

"So far, based on our initial observations and the information we have, there is no evidence to suggest that the election outcome was affected in any way," Simard said in a news release.

TERREBONNE - The Bloc Québécois says it has filed a Superior Court challenge to overturn the election results in the federal riding of Terrebonne after losing by one vote.

In a news release, the party says there is doubt about who won the riding in the April 28 federal election because a mail-in vote from a Bloc supporter was returned to the sender.

Elections Canada has admitted that a misprint on an envelope used to mail a special ballot from Terrebonne led to one Bloc voter's ballot being returned to her.

Liberal candidate Tatiana Auguste initially won the riding, but it flipped to Bloc candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné after the votes went through a validation process.

OTTAWA - The federal election result in Nunavut still has not been validated by Elections Canada, because one final ballot box has been delayed by a blizzard.

NDP incumbent Lori Idlout won the unofficial result by 77 votes over Liberal candidate Kilikvak Kabloona.

Elections Canada has a validation process to confirm the unofficial count completed on election night, but the final box from the community of Naujaat has not made it to Iqaluit to be tallied.

Returning officer Jean-Claude Nguyen confirmed to The Canadian Press the box is stuck at the airline cargo facility in Rankin Inlet.

OTTAWA - Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet said Thursday the party plans to launch a legal challenge after losing the federal riding of Terrebonne by a single vote.

Blanchet said the party wants a court order to run the vote again because a mail-in vote from a Bloc supporter was returned to sender, which would have brought his party into a tie with the Liberals.

Elections Canada admitted this week that a misprint on an envelope used to mail a special ballot from Terrebonne led to one Bloc voter's mail-in ballot being returned to her. The misprint contained an error in the last three digits of the postal code for where the ballot should have been sent.

Despite the error, Elections Canada said Wednesday the result of the judicial recount in the riding was final. However, Blanchet said the party will contest the result in Quebec's Superior Court.

MONTREAL - The Bloc Québécois candidate for the Montreal-area riding of Terrebonne says she's considering her options after a judicial recount that saw her lose by a single vote.

“Following a judicial recount that caused a vote reversal as spectacular as unexpected, I owe it to myself to evaluate all the options before us,” Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné wrote on Facebook on Monday, adding, “I’ll keep you updated on the next steps.” 

Sinclair-Desgagné’s statement comes as Elections Canada investigates a possible error involving an uncounted mail-in ballot from a Bloc voter in the riding. Voter Emmanuelle Bossé told Montreal media that she mailed in her ballot in early April using an addressed envelope provided by Elections Canada, but it was returned to her as undeliverable. She told the outlets that she was voting for the Bloc Québécois.

Elections Canada confirmed in an email that an error had occurred, adding that it was "still working to gather the facts" about what happened. "We can confirm that there appears to be an error with the return address printed on this elector’s return envelope," the agency wrote late Monday. "Specifically, part of the postal code was wrong."

TORONTO - The Liberals inched another seat closer to a majority government on Saturday, after a judicial recount left their candidate as the winner in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne, by a margin of just one vote.

An official with Elections Canada confirmed to The Canadian Press that Liberal Tatiana Auguste will finish ahead of incumbent Bloc Québécois candidate Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné.

It brings the Liberals to 170 seats in the House of Commons, two shy of the 172 needed for a majority government. The Bloc seat count falls to 22.

Auguste was initially projected to win the riding by 35 votes after the April 28 election, but on May 1, following the required postelection validation process, Sinclair-Desgagné, who was first elected in 2021, moved ahead by 44 votes.

OTTAWA - Some Conservative MPs are expressing support for party leader Pierre Poilievre after he lost both the federal election and his own seat on Monday.

In his concession speech early Tuesday morning, Poilievre indicated he would stay on as leader. The Conservative party did not respond when asked Wednesday whether he has officially decided to stay.

"My view is he's not going anywhere," said Kory Teneycke, Ontario Premier Doug Ford's former campaign manager and a former director of communications for former prime minister Stephen Harper.

Teneycke — who made headlines during the election when he told media that Poilievre's team had committed "campaign malpractice" — said the Conservative campaign pivoted and improved as time went on.

OTTAWA - A group trying to make a case for electoral reform by creating very long ballots is declaring victory in this week's election — even as critics accuse it of indulging in stunts that undermine democracy.

"It's been a success," said Mark Moutter, one of dozens of protest candidates who ran in the Ottawa riding of Carleton.

"I've never seen people looking more optimistically at electoral reform, ever."

The Longest Ballot Committee started targeting ridings in 2021 by nominating multiple people — some of them living in other provinces — in order to ensure extremely large ballots.